ATLANTA, April 18, 2007 â€” Wayne Wolf, Ph.D., a leading expert in embedded computing systems and smart cameras, will join the Georgia Institute of Technology in July as its newest Georgia Research Alliance (GRA) Eminent Scholar.

Dr. Wolf will occupy the Rhesa "Ray" S. Farmer, Jr., Distinguished Chair in Embedded Computer Systems at Georgia Tech's School of Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE), where he will continue his research and commercialization activities.

Prior to coming to Georgia, Dr. Wolf was a professor in the Department of Electrical Engineering at Princeton University in New Jersey. There, he focused his research and teaching on embedded computing, VLSI design (Very Large Scale Integration, the process of creating integrated circuits by combining thousands of transistor-based circuits into a single chip), computer architecture and multimedia. He also led the school's Embedded Systems Group, which studies a wide variety of aspects of embedded computing systems (computers as part of larger systems).

Dr. Wolf is the 57th scientist attracted to Georgia research universities under the GRA Eminent Scholars program, a national model for attracting world-class scientific talent.

"Wayne Wolf is a highly valuable addition to our GRA Eminent Scholar program," said GRA President C. Michael Cassidy. "A key GRA goal is to recruit superior scholars to Georgia who have a proven record of converting research into useful applications. Dr. Wolf's knowledge of video and computer technology and successful forays into commercialization can lead to products that will benefit many."

Dr. Wolf is a prolific author and a sought-after lecturer in industry and academia. He has written several crucial textbooks currently in use at colleges and universities around the world, including High-Performance Embedded Computing, Computers as Components: Principles of Embedded Computer System Design and Modern VLSI Design. Dr. Wolf co-founded several technical conferences, including the Hardware/Software Co-Design Workshop and the Multiprocessor System-on-Chip Symposium. He also founded and serves as editor-in-chief of the Association of Computing Machinery Transactions on Embedded Systems Computing.

Dr. Wolf and his research group developed new distributed smart-camera systems. These cameras cooperate in real time to analyze activities in a scene, such as movements of people, vehicles and other objects. Distributed smart-camera systems can be used in many applications ranging from security and medicine to smart rooms, which automatically track and adjust to the preferences of people in them.

In 2003, Verificon Corporation spun out of Princeton University to commercialize this technology. With Dr. Wolf serving as its chairman, Verificon is now finalizing two product lines. One system, jointly developed with Yokogawa Electric of Japan, is designed for security in large areas like stadiums and airports. The other system analyzes the activity of customers in stores to help retailers better plan their merchandise displays. Verificon is already searching for part-time programmers in Atlanta and plans to hire full-time employees in the area over the next year.

"The results of Dr. Wolf's work have clear implications for how surveillance and homeland security applications are now developed and will be in the future," says Gary May, professor and Steve W. Chaddick School Chair of Georgia Tech's School of ECE. "They are also of critical importance to the economic and overall security of Atlanta and the state as a whole."

Verificon is not Dr. Wolf's first experience with new companies. In 2001-2002, he was the chief technical officer for MediaWorks Technology, a start-up devoted to systems-on-chips for consumer multimedia devices. The company designed integrated circuits that dramatically improved the cost and performance of CD/MP3 players, digital cameras, cell phones, broadband wireless set-top boxes, digital TVs, PDAs and flat panel displays.

"I'm excited about my move to Georgia Tech," says Dr. Wolf. "It's a world-class institution with lots of exciting people and projects and a great attraction to me. As for commercial opportunities, I expect this to be a great place to hire talented engineers and programmers to help us build our systems at Verificon. And, because Atlanta is home to so many companies, we hope to find some important clients there as well."

Dr. Wolf received his Bachelor's, Master's and Doctor of Philosophy degrees in Electrical Engineering from Stanford University. Before becoming a faculty member at Princeton in 1989, he worked with AT&T Bell Laboratories in Murray Hill, N.J.

A model public-private partnership between Georgia universities, business and state government, the Georgia Research Alliance helps build Georgia's technology-rich economy in three major ways: through attracting Eminent Scholars to Georgia's research universities; through helping create centers of research excellence and through converting research into products, services and jobs that drive the economy. To learn more about GRA, visit www.gra.org.

The Georgia Institute of Technology is one of the nation's premiere research universities. Ranked eighth among U.S. News & World Report's top public universities, Georgia Tech's 17,000 students are enrolled in its Colleges of Architecture, Computing, Engineering, Liberal Arts, Management and Sciences. Tech is among the nation's top producers of women and African-American engineers. The Institute offers research opportunities to both undergraduate and graduate students and is home to more than 100 interdisciplinary units plus the Georgia Tech Research Institute.